Essays on the economic determinants and impacts of migration: the roles of broadband connectivity, industry-level productivity and human capital

摘要

This thesis investigates the motivation behind individuals’ decision to migrate, the impact of migration on the host countries’ economies, and finally the impact of high skilled emigration on the human capital level in origin countries. Chapter 1 investigates whether ICT facilitates migration flows from origin to host countries based on the magnitude of the flows. Chapter 2 investigates the productivity effects of migration in four European Union (EU) countries: the UK, Spain and the Netherlands for 1995-2008 and Germany for 2002-2008. This analysis was carried out using EU Labour Force Survey (LFS) and EU-KLEMS data. We apply the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) variant for the autoregressive distributed-lag (ARDL) estimator. Various findings are presented in order to distinguish between EU and non-EU origins as well as the skill level of migrants. Chapter 3 contributes an insightful panel data analysis of human capital and high skilled emigration for 74 origin countries from 1980 to 2000 with a five-year frequency. We find a significant negative brain drain impact of high skilled emigration across countries sampled.